Fusion of Body and Environment with Movable Carabiners for Wire-Driven Robots Toward Expansion of Physical Capabilities

Abstract

Many wire-driven robots have been developed due to the flexibility in wire placement. Generally, conventional robots have fixed performance at the time of manufacture, making it difficult to deal with unforeseen environments and tasks. We focus on the flexibility in wire placement to solve this problem. In this study, the robot's body is fused with the environment to expand physical capabilities. To achieve this, we designed a movable carabiner that allows the wire ends to be easily attached to and detached from the environment. We added the movable carabiners to an existing wire-driven robot and implemented the proposed method in a real-world setup. With this method, we were able to accomplish expansion of the robot's physical capabilities, such as reinforcing its own arm and carrying a heavy object. By these results, the proposed method has demonstrated its effectiveness as a viable solution to the problem.